Out of the Family: Generations of Women in Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis

Abstract

Marjane Satrapi's graphic memoir Persepolis offers a new perspective on familial legacies and feminist generations. Through the use of black-and-white stylised images and the interplay of panels, Satrapi shows how three generations of women interact in the spaces of memory as well as history. In this autobiographical narrative of a transnational artist's development, dissident genealogies turn out to be as much a matter of books as of blood. Persepolis presents a complex vision, both political and personal, of an intergenerational legacy derived from acts of rereading and translation. As we contemplate the question of gender and generations from the still-fragile threshold of the twenty-first century, Satrapi offers images that counter our stereotypes, both foreign and domestic.